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Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Geek Jargon Explained

Pharming: When fraudsters redirect net users from legitimate to fake sitesPhishing: Fraudulent e-mails and pop-ups to fool you into revealing personal information for criminal gainRogue dialler: Software that installs itself on computers and changes settings to dial a premium rate number instead of usual dial-up accountSpam: Unsolicited e-mails, often offering products or services in which you have no interestSpyware: Small programs that secretly monitor sites visited, potentially violating privacy and slowing computersVirus: Malicious program designed to damage data; usually spread via infected e-mail attachmentsTrojan: Malicious software disguised as harmless programFirewall: Software to protect computers against hackersKeylogging: Software/hardware to track keystrokes on a computer to gather passwords, credit card numbers

I found this list in a BBC Article about a survey by AOL UK that claims 16% of participants never heard of the word "spam". Well duh! If you're still using "America Online" and you're doing it in "Europe" I'd even be surprised if you'd recognized the word "e-mail"!